“Hello, I need your help./I have to report serious complaints./I have this issue.” All these conversations get initiated by the customer/clients when they dial the number to express their queries/complaints/issues of a particular business/company. Call centers are the conciliators that act as a pathway between customers and businesses. Call centers play an immense role in delivering phenomenal customer service to customers. If customers witness exceptional customer service/experience, it indicates customer satisfaction leading to organizational success and overall operational effectiveness.
To ensure that customers are achieving the maximum level of satisfaction, it is necessary to measure the call center performance and improve it with different measures. For these actions, the call center metrics are tracked. Call center metrics are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are gathered from call center management (CCM) and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms. These key metrics and KPIs can range from tracking the time agents commit on a single call to the number of abandoned calls to excessive call volumes. Click here to read the blog on how to manage call volume.
There are several questions related to customer experience (CX) that need to be addressed by call center reps and agents. These questions may remain the same but the answers may be constantly changing such as:
i) Are customers happy and satisfied with the service?
ii) Are the contact centers providing the required support and guidance to the customers?
iii) Are the right people and right materials allocated at the right place at the right time?
iv) Are techs being updated timely per changing situations?
These questions need to be checked upon to measure call centers’ performance, identify the areas of improvement, determine the strengths and weaknesses of the call center agents, discover the need for the type of training and coaching for the call center agents, analyze the technological needs, and many more.
Call center metrics are used to track and measure the performance of call centers that provide valuable data regarding customer satisfaction, agents’ training and development, and technological updates. Call center managers are responsible for monitoring these metrics’ patterns to understand what the call centers are doing and are these efforts worth delivering the best customer experience. This enables the call center managers to make corrective decisions such as scheduling staff, introducing needed training and development programs to the staff, addressing implicit issues affecting customer satisfaction scores, and measuring the efficiency of overall contact center performance. As call center metrics provide valuable data for performance management, call center metrics’ tracking is just a start to optimize the call center performance. It can be termed as a strategic approach for organizational success, agents’ productivity, and more.
Let's delve into some of the du jour call center key metrics and KPIs to track for optimizing call center performance.
As the name suggests, this measures the sequence of the inbound calls at the call center over a given period of time. This KPI has to identify the peak call hours and seasonal calls so that the scheduling of staff can be done in an easy and wise manner.
It represents the percentage of calls that are answered within a specified time frame. This metric governs the agreed-upon service levels between the service provider and the callers. Generally, it refers to the qualitative particulars such as availability of respondents, quality of call, response times, and more. It measures how well a contact center can handle inbound calls within acceptable hold times.
It measures the percentage of calls that the agent can handle in just a first call without any transfer of calls or hurdles without solving the problem. It represents the number of tickets the agent can resolve in his/her first attempt. It can also be considered as the anomalous KPI used in the contact centers. When customers’ issues are resolved in the first call, it enhances customer satisfaction and reduces the chances of customer attrition. In some contact centers, Repeat call rate (RCR) is also measured.
This indicator identifies the average amount of time that the caller has to wait before speaking with the call center agent. It is also known as the average waiting time. Higher FRT means a higher level of customer dissatisfaction. It may be high in number due to staffing problems and other technological problems.
It can be calculated as (Total ring duration + Retry interval)/Total calls.
This KPI covers the average amount of expense incurred for every call responded to/handled by a customer service agent. It observes how much each call costs on average. It includes the cost of labor, technology, technical support, and more. All these costs for each call are divided by the total number of calls to calculate CPC. If CPC is higher, it indicates the expensive tech for current call center operations.
This KPI compares the current call volume to the number of callers waiting for the contact centers’ ultimate help and support. This enables the call center center agents to coordinate calls in a timely way.
This indicator showcases the number of inbound calls that get a busy tone. When the customer calls are blocked, the customers may have a bad impression of the business and the service they get.
It represents the number of calls hanging up before the reach of the call to an ultimate agent. The inbound calls that get terminated before being connected to the live agent are considered abandoned calls that lead to customer dissatisfaction and frustration. It must be very low or next to zero.
The answer call rate represents the percentage of calls that are answered about the number of total calls. The higher the answer call rate, the better the call center efficiency.
This KPI indicates the percentage of missed calls to the total received calls. If this KPI is high, it means there is an urgent need for refinement in staffing level and call handling procedures.
This indicator represents the longest time that the customer has to wait until the call gets connected to the call center agent within the specific time frame. It is really important to reduce this metric rate to reduce customer dissatisfaction.
This indicator clarifies the time when call volumes reach an extreme level. This helps the contact center managers to anticipate experiencing peak call hours helping them in human resource management and analyzing staffing needs.
When the callers refer to leaving a message with their contact information expecting a callback and do not prefer staying in the queue or on hold, it refers to the callback messaging. This metric has to be reduced as customers want instant resolution through the call.
This KPI represents the average time an agent commits to a customer call from answering the call until the end of customer introduction or the call is disconnected. The higher the Average Handle Time, the higher the costs for contact centers.
The agents keeping the customers on hold are measured by this metric. It measures the average duration of the hold times for the caller. To provide quick and prompt customer service, this indicator should be minimized.
It represents the average amount of time that agents spend talking to customers. It doesn't indicate the time spent on hold. This metric needs to be optimized to reduce unrequired expenses and enhance operational efficiency.
This metric can be regarded as the customer experience metric. It measures customer loyalty and satisfaction. They are asked certain questions and their responses are recorded on a scale of 0 to 10. The responses are categorized into 3 divisions:
Promoters - those who select 9 or 10
Passives - those who select 7 or 8
Detractors - those who select 6 or below
NPS is calculated by subtracting the detractors from the percentage of promoters. The higher the NPS, the higher the performance of contact center agents.
With the use of customer satisfaction surveys, customer satisfaction is measured regarding their satisfaction with the products, customer services, support, and ultimate assistance.
Responses are recorded and classified into Very satisfied, satisfied, non-satisfied, and very unsatisfied.
This metric measures how much the customer has to put in to get his/her issue resolved by the contact center team. To measure this, a point or seven-point scale is used such as Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree. The higher the CES, the better the customer service.
This KPI helps to identify the agents’ commitment throughout their shift and how they are utilizing their time. It represents the percentage of time that the call center agents commit to the assigned tasks from the time they pick up the phone call until its end completing all the tasks.
These KPIs are required to measure the contact center performance, efficiency, and productivity of the call center agents. For effective KPIs, organizational alignment is mostly required as these indicators drive organizational success with clear planning and optimize organizational performance with available data. The KPIs can be measured following measures:
I. Contact center reporting software
II. Queue performance reports
III. Post-interaction surveys
IV. Quality assurance (QA) evaluations
V. Agent performance reports
VI. Historical data analysis
VII. Agents scoreboards
Hence the best practices to optimize contact center performance using these key performance indicators are:
1. Alignment of organizational goals with KPIs
2. Regular review and adjustment of KPIs
3. Agent coaching, training, and support along with personalized learning
4. Capitalizing on advanced gamification
5. Management of individualized performance
There are several challenges for optimizing the call center performance such as:
1. Decipher of available data obtained from KPIs
2. Data Accuracy
3. Data integration
4. Use of the right KPIs
5. Skilled manpower for data usage
Call centers are also considered cost centers and the center of information and trust. The KPIs mentioned above can totally enable the call center reps and businesses to compare the performance, analyze the need for areas of improvement, and many more. Several other KPIs are used depending on organizational needs and objectives. There's no doubt that the contact center KPIs are important for any contact center to deliver exceptional customer experience and minimize unnecessary costs for business success and operational effectiveness.